World Poverty and the Role of Agricultural Technology: Direct and Indirect Effects

e the Modern Varieties: labor-intensive, risk-reducing, and productive of cheaper, coarser varieties of food staples. The way this aggregate result came about was, however, a complex phenomenon, and there were not only gainers among the poor. While, overall, the largest poverty reduction effect is likely to have been on consumers through falling prices for staple foods (Pinstrup-Andersen, 1979), there were other benefits for the poor through adoption by smallholders, employment creation for the rural landless, and growth linkage effects with the non-farm economy (Hazell and Ramasamy, 1991). There were also losers among the poor. Small farmers were sometimes displaced by large farmers, tenants by owners, workers by laborsaving innovations, and producers in marginal areas by those in better endowed environments (Scobie and Posada, 1978). Hence, using the technology instrument as part of a strategy for poverty reduction requires careful ex-ante analysis of how the nature of technology, t